The Design Meets Disability reading made me rethink how I usually see design, because I realized I tend to treat accessibility as something separate from “good design,” like something added later to fix a problem instead of something considered from the start. Pullin challenges that idea by showing how assistive devices often aim to hide disability or make someone appear more “normal,” and I found myself questioning why that feels like the default goal. When I think about it, that approach says more about what society is comfortable with than what people need or want, and I had not really noticed how strong that assumption is until now.
What stayed with me is his focus on expression, because he suggests that assistive design does not have to disappear or blend in, it can reflect identity in a visible way, and that shift feels important. When I think about prosthetics designed to look exactly like a natural limb, I see how design tries to erase difference, but when I picture a prosthetic designed with color or shape or style, it changes the meaning of the object completely. It becomes something personal instead of something corrective. That made me realize how much design controls what gets seen as normal, and how easy it is to follow that without questioning it.
After reading this, I feel more aware of how I approach design decisions, even in small ways, because I see how choices about form, appearance, and function are never neutral. If you design for one type of user, you set a standard that excludes others without saying it directly, and I think that is what I will carry forward from this reading. I need to think about who is included from the beginning, not after, and I need to question why certain designs try so hard to hide difference instead of allowing it to exist openly.